A roundup of some the most interesting articles we've found on the web. The articles this week are not specific to ecommerce, but they offer important insights.
- Tips for Carousels - Ecommerce sites are notorious for slideshows and carousels on the front page. Here are some tips to maximize the usefulness and efficiency of them. The first tip: make sure you actually need one.
- A Case Study in Authority Links - The main challenge of any reputable SEO campaign is getting quality and authoritative links from authoritative websites. They don't just hand these things out. Tad Chef tells us how he got links from seven such sites. Some good lessons in here.
- The Death of Organic Search - Google is killing what made it so great in the first place - its search listings. In a typical search, only 13% of screen space is actually occupied by organic search results. In other words, 87% of the space is taken up by ads or Google products. Google wants you to pay to play, essentially. Perhaps its time to brush up your PPC skills and campaigns.
- 180 Million Users are Color Blind - Is your website usable and accesible to color blind users? If your design relys on color cues to direct people, that is something to tweak on your next redesign, or right now. And if your products have color choices, be sure and have textual hints and cues. You don't want a customer choosing between what they see is "black or black."
